Thursday, December 27, 2018

Slowing economy and the recent trend of job cuts in India and elsewhere have made many programmers anxious about their job security. I receive a lot of emails and Facebook chats about suggestions to improve IT skills to remain competitive and marketable. So, if you are in the same boat, you can learn Big Data and IT Automation to remain marketable. These two skills are in great demand and will generate a lot of jobs in future. I have suggested many Java developers around the world to learn Big Data Technologies e.g. Apache Spark to give their CV a new boost. Since it's not easy to learn a new technology and at a certain age, you feel a lot of restriction and resistance from both your body and mind. In order to overcome that I found a combination of books and online courses works great.
When it comes to Big Data there are many options available as its a broad topic but we'll focus only on Apache Spark framework.

The Apache Spark is the hottest Big Data skill today. More and more organizations are adopting Apache Spark for building their big data processing and analytics applications and the demand for Apache Spark professionals is skyrocketing.

Apache Spark has taken the world by storm by boasting speeds 10-100x faster than Hadoop and setting the world record in large scale sorting.

Apache Spark's general abstraction means it can also be expanded beyond simple batch processing, making it capable of such things as blazing-fast, iterative algorithms and exactly once streaming semantics

In short, learning Apache Spark will help you to get good jobs, better quality of work and the best remuneration packages.

5 Apache Spark and Big Data Courses for Java Developers

Here is some of the best courses to learn Apache Spark framework and Big Data in general for Java developers. These courses are ideal for Software Professionals e.g. Java and Scala developers, Big Data Architects, and Data Engineers. In fact, QA and Business Analyst people can also benefit from these courses.

This course covers all the fundamentals of Apache Spark with Java and teaches you everything you need to know about developing Spark applications with Java.

At the end of this course, you will gain in-depth knowledge about Apache Spark and general big data analysis and manipulations skills to help your company to adopt Apache Spark for building big data processing pipeline and data analytics applications.

The course also has some good real-world examples of big data and Apache Spark e.g. you will write Spark applications to find out the median salary of developers in different countries through the Stack Overflow survey data; you will also develop a system to analyze how maker spaces are distributed across different regions in the United Kingdom etc.

These examples will give you the knowledge and experience required to crack any Big Data interview.

This course covers all the fundamentals of Apache Spark with Scala and teaches you everything you need to know about developing Spark applications with Scala.

At the end of this course, you will gain in-depth knowledge about Apache Spark and general big data analysis and manipulations skills to help your company to adopt Apache Spark for building big data processing pipeline and data analytics applications.

This course covers 10+ hands-on big data examples. You will learn valuable knowledge about how to frame data analysis problems as Spark problems.

3. Apache Spark Fundamentals
This is one of the best course to getting started with Apache Spark framework. The author, Justin Pihony has done a fabulous job in explaining both theory and real-world usage of Apache Spark in this online course.

Here, you'll learn Spark from the ground up, starting with its history before creating a Wikipedia analysis application as one of the means for learning a wide scope of its core API.

That core knowledge will make it easier to look into Spark's other libraries, such as the streaming and SQL APIs. Finally, you'll learn how to avoid a few commonly encountered rough edges of Spark.

You will leave this course with a tool belt capable of creating your own performance-maximized Spark application.

In short, this online course will teach you how to use Apache Spark to analyze your big data at lightning-fast speeds; leaving Hadoop in the dust!

For a deep dive on SQL and Streaming, you can also check out the sequel, Handle Fast Data with Apache Spark SQL and Streaming on PluaralSight.

The author, Andrew Brust has done a wonderful job to bring all moving pieces together to present a very informative picture of Big Data from both Developers and Business Analyst point of view.

This course will get you up and run with the definitions and technologies you need to know, and the vendors you need to know about.

By the end of the course, you’ll know what Big Data is, how it can integrate with conventional database and Business Intelligence (BI) technologies, and how to devise a strategy for adopting Big Data in your organization.

No Big Data or NoSQL knowledge is required, but a lot will be imparted. This course is aimed at executives and business decision-makers and is actionable for technologists as well.

If you are looking to learn Apache Spark 2.0, practice end-to-end projects and take it to a job interview then this is the perfect course for you.

This course teaches you Apache Spark 2.0 with Java, trains you in building Spark Analytics and machine learning programs and helps you practice hands-on (2K LOC code samples !) with an end-to-end real-life application project.

That's all about some of the best courses to learn both Big Data and Apache Spark framework for Java developers. These courses are enough to get started with Apache Spark. Even if you are not looking for job change, you can learn this valuable skill in your free time. I am sure this skill will pay off in a big way in coming future.